I've no idea what the strange mechanisms in this box were. If I had been strapped to a chair in a tiny cell with bright lights all around me and a grinning man in a lab coat opened this box in front of me, I would have been scared enough to sign any papers or tell him anything he wanted to know.

The dovetailed wooden box was very, very cool, though; I wanted it badly enough to stick around until it went on the block. They sold it and its weird contents for sixty-five dollars, much more than we had budgeted for that day.